Senator Bernie Sanders is a dangerous man. He is a master at misleading, generalizing and ignoring the implications of what he proposes. Minimum wage is a recent example.

Sanders is correct to the extent the minimum wage should be raised to adjust to inflation and thereafter should be indexed. However, such an increase is not near $15.00

Most important is that he misleads about who earns the minimum wage. It is a very small segment of the US workforce. Most are not married or heads of families. Most are young and work part-time.

The answer is not trying to solve economic problems by raising pay for rapidly disappearing low-wage jobs, but to get people into better jobs. He does not think through the broad implications and counterproductive effects of going to $15.00 an hour. And by the way, a couple earning the minimum wage each are low income, but considerably above the poverty level.

Best case is that the family that needs a two bedroom apartment has 3 people, 2 adults and one child. If the two adults worked at the federal minimum wage, they would would make too much ($30160) for qualify for SNAP (food stamps requires less than $26556) so it is not a starvation wage and you still qualify for WIC in Vermont. Vermont’s poverty level income is $24339.

If it was just one working adult and one child then the single income would allow for SNAP and WIC in Vermont which almost brings it up to $24k and that is not counting any other assistance such as HUD.

However, the minimum wage in Vermont is not the same as the federal wage of $7.25, but $10.50 on its way to $15 /hr by 2024. Because of this many of those same people helped by SNAP and WIC will no longer be eligible so the increase in wages may hurt them before 2024.

Exactly the point I have been making. When the MW rises then so should all the points for any form of assistance because the poverty level should increase as well. All of which means unless you get out of a MW job you will be no better off.

Comrade Bernie’s stock in trade is cherry picking data that fits his narrative, ignoring consequences of his solutions to perceived problems and relying on the logical fallacy of “appeal to emotion.” The thing that makes him dangerous is that too many people are just to ignorant or mentally lazy to see the faults in his arguments.